Trump’s determination is pragmatic common sense
It’s a monumental construction. Across the hill from my house in Christchurch, a neighbour who is fed up with the scourge of burglaries is splashing megabucks building the kind of formidable perimeter wall that would set Donald Trump aglow.
It’s reminiscent of the grand-scale walled constructions Hollywood celebrities have a propensity to deploy, whether it be fortress walls to safeguard their Beverly Hills mansions, or the gold-plated refuge of gated communities in Bel Air and Malibu.
The irony couldn’t be more majestic, given the loud-mouth Hollywood luvvies are particularly strident in their foam-flecking condemnation of Trump’s grand designs for a US-Mexico border wall.
Here in New Zealand, where the bulk of media coverage is tiresomely invested in the anti-Trump talk, it’s easy to be blithely complacent about the border security crisis engulfing the United States. Mercifully, we’re an island nation, blessed with the immeasurable advantage of being buffered by farreaching oceans. Vast caravans of humanity stampeding their way to and through our back door is not a concern that keeps us up at night. Thank God.
But strip back the political tribalism and the game-playing and President Trump’s determination to strengthen the security of the southern border through physical barriers makes pragmatic common sense.
The border spans 1954 miles (3126 kilometres), and Trump was elected to office pledging to erect a 1000 mile-long barrier. Vast chunks of the border are already safeguarded by impenetrable terrain, particularly in the Rio Grande region, while 40 miles of existing barriers are being replaced or strengthened, and 60 miles of new ones, approved by Congress last year, will be built in the coming months.
I’m going to be driving along much of the border next month. The best arbiters of whether manmade barriers are effective are Customs and Border Protection officials on the front line. In a survey conducted this month by the National Border Patrol Council, 89 per cent of agents overwhelmingly supported adding a ‘‘wall system’’ in strategic locations, embracing President Trump’s argument that it will beef up their ability to nab or deter illegal immigrants, before they disappear into the shadows, joining the other 11 million.
Mark Morgan, a career FBI official who served as Border Patrol Chief during the Obama administration, has also reaffirmed his support for Trump’s policy. And that’s the most maddening, bloody-minded aspect to this stoush. Over the years, every leading Democrat, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama has talked the talk on expanding the wall system. A decade ago Senate Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, authorised building about 700 miles of fencing on the southwest border, but it never happened.
As the partial federal government shutdown enters its record fourth week, the chief of the Border Patrol agents’ union, Brandon Judd, has reasserted how effective wall systems are in deterring illegal crossings. Recently beefed-up barrier installations surrounding entry points like Naco in Arizona and McAllen in Texas have seen a dramatic plunge in illegal crossings.
Driving the Democrats’ intractable resistance to Trump’s expansionary wall policy is not just their pathological hatred of him but their everincreasing dependence on the Latino vote, and those who believe in open borders.
However, that doesn’t gloss over the brutal reality on the southern border. Department of Homeland Security data indicates that Customs and Border Protection apprehended 51,856 people trying to cross the border illegally, in November alone. That’s 1700 per day. The Homeland Security website indicates that 90 per cent of the heroin smuggled into the USA comes across that porous border, and 23 per cent of inmates in federal prisons are illegal immigrants.
In the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years, more than
210,876 people with previous criminal convictions were arrested. In 2018, the number of family units arriving at the border jumped 50 per cent, to
161,000, while unaccompanied children rose 25 per cent, to 60,000. The immigration court backlog has spiralled to nearly 800,000 cases.
Despite the 2000 per cent increase in the past five years in asylum claims, the overwhelming number of people trek north for economic reasons, so their asylum applications are declined. Yet few are deported.
The fact that so many socialist economies of Central America are corrupt, crime-infested basket-cases is not Uncle Sam’s responsibility.
Over the years, every leading Democrat, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama has talked the talk on expanding the wall system.